AHA: HF Tied to Higher Risk for Fatal Cancer

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This study was published as an abstract and presented at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered to be preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

LOS ANGELES -- Heart failure patients face an increased risk of cancer along with an increased risk of death, researchers said here.

A cohort of patients diagnosed with heart failure at baseline were significantly more likely than participants in a control population without heart failure to develop cancer at follow-up (HR 1.57, 95% CI 1.13 to 2.50), reported Tal Hasin, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., in a poster presentation at the American Heart Association meeting.

The findings show that "further investigation is needed to explain the associations between the two conditions," he told MedPage Today.

Non-cardiac causes of death in heart failure patients have not been fully explored, the authors explained. They looked at associations between heart failure and cancer and the impact of that association on survival.

For this case-control study, residents of Olmsted County, Minn., with newly diagnosed heart failure were age- and sex-matched with community controls without heart failure (961 pairs). The study population consisted of mostly female participants (54%) with a mean age of 73.

Pairs without a prior history of cancer (596) were then followed to evaluate the subsequent cancer risk in the cohort study.

Patients were followed-up with from 1979 to 1990 and 1991 to 2002.

During the study period, 22% of heart failure patients and 23% of controls had any history of cancer (odds ratio=0.94, 95% CI 0.75-1.17).

Over a total of 9,201 person-years of follow-up (mean time 7.7 years per participant), there were 244 cancer cases, including:

The hazard ratios were similar for men and women (P=0.68) but were stronger among participants younger than 75 (P=0.09).

The authors reported no significant difference in associations between heart failure and cancer subtype.

These findings suggest that healthcare professionals should carry out basic cancer screening for patients presenting with heart failure, Hasin noted, although he stopped short of making specific recommendations.

"Should we do more surveillance for cancer in this subgroup of patients? This needs to be tested in further studies, but it may be the case," he said.

He added that additional studies should address potential causes or risks in heart failure populations.

Hasin pointed out that the predominantly white study population may impact the generalizability of the findings.

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